What if Cortés had been killed or his expedition into Aztec-dominated Mexico had failed? (The essay discusses La Noche Triste, the near-destruction of Cortés' force in 1520, as a key possibility of a point of divergence.)

"Probably the most interesting nonfiction historical fiction was What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (Putnam, 1999). Its editor, Robert Cowley, persuaded two dozen historians to write essays on how a slight turn of fate at a decisive moment could have changed the very annals of time." —The New York Times[2]

"The essays collected in What If? are sober extrapolations from historical fact. Even so, they're a lot of fun. They remind us of the slender threads on which our past hangs. One small break—at Poitiers or on Long Island, at Gettysburg or in Berlin—might have unraveled the entire tapestry of modern history." —CNN[3]

"Those and other provocative 'counterfactuals' are the topic of the intriguing What if?, a compilation of essays by 34 distinguished historians... Each essay testifies to the fact that history hangs by a thread." —Houston Chronicle[4]